Buke and Gasehave this vague sense of unease. Like someone, somewhere is always watching. Do a Google image search for the band’s new album title, General Dome, and you’ll come across images that instill ideas of paranoia and surveillance such as security cameras and rockets being launched. In times like these, when governments can freely survey the citizenry’s every action and our lives become increasingly less private, people are often drawn to code. Take a look at Buke and Gase’s album cover above. Its minimalist design could mean nothing at all. Perhaps this would be the case, if this were any other band than Buke and Gase.

Inspired by a recent Sol LeWitt exhibition at the Dia Beacon museum in Beacon, NY, Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez started brainstorming about coded imagery. They decided to build a system of images that would dictate the direction of the artwork, which lead them to creating a new alphabet they could write with, not totally different from the way they create their music. They built a graphical alphabet that the artwork is made of, the code of which will be available on their website once it’s released. There are more coded images like this throughout the packaging.

On Wednesday, the band shared their heavy, raw nerve of a title track via Pitchfork. General Dome is out January 29th via Brassland.

Also, the band is announcing their record release show and subsequent tour. If you’d like an idea of what to expect, check out a video of their whole performance at NPR Music’s CMJ party earlier this year.